


Brave New World

by spinalimmobilization (gilead)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, not a tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-05-28 13:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6331531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilead/pseuds/spinalimmobilization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2x15 canon deviation. Emerson extends Cage Wallace’s offer to Clarke instead.</p><p>But alliances are never long for this world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lexa’s people are lambs to the slaughter.

Clarke knows because schoolchildren read about wars in space. Thermopylae, where the relatively scant Greeks held out for three days against the Spartans by funnelling them through the narrow pass. And the Battle of Cerignola, the first of many battles to be won with firearms, where the victorious Spanish suffered 500 hundred dead to the French’s 2000.

Then there were the bombs, and nothing left but words on pages, drawings on walls.

If Clarke’s thinking about a retreat, Lexa must be. Another shower of gunfire sends rubble splashing into the collar of her jacket. Debris has fallen into Lexa’s hair, of all the things to notice. There’s something Clarke wants to say, a dim, unwanted thought.

The scrape of Lexa’s sword in her scabbard scatters all clarity.

“Your people can flank the gunners on the ridge if mine provide a distraction,” she offers, dislodging the rubble with a shake of her head.

Clarke searches for Lexa’s arm, fingers brushing the rough fabric of her sleeve. “Wait, you—”

It’s all Lexa allows before she pulls smoothly to her feet.

“Stay here. Wait for the opening.”

Clarke signals to Monroe and the rest, behind cover some distance away. They storm the ridge when the fire on their position dies down, but somebody is already on the path.

Emerson. Alone between them and the fracas and unarmed, hands aloft in surrender. It’s strange enough to loosen Clarke’s grip on the trigger, and she wavers.

“What are you doing?”

“Making you an offer.”

“Get out of my way.”

He doesn’t, she doesn’t fire on an unarmed man, and he continues, snakelike. “Your people are more like mine than theirs. Their ways are barbaric. Their Commander is a tyrant. This won’t last. You’ll never live side by side.”

“That’s bullshit.” Her conviction has startled him. She steadies her aim. “Move. Last chance.”

Someone’s touching Clarke’s elbow. Monroe. She can’t tell if it’s in warning, or supplication.

“Is that what your people think, a majority opinion?” Emerson’s stopped talking to just her. His volume has increased; the others are listening. “Ally with us. We’ll free your people, wipe out the savages, and take our rightful place in the world. Don’t tell me none of you want that.”

“Why would we want to ally with kidnappers and torturers?”

“And what do you call the grounders?” Emerson grows in confidence when Clarke declines to respond. “You have a common enemy now, but what guarantee do you have after the war? You were their enemy, and you will be again. Our people understand each other. We do what’s necessary now, no different from you. All we want is to live the way we were meant to. But the grounders—they’re beyond understanding.”

Clarke swallows her automatic denial. The Lexa she knows, who changed her mind, exists only in private. The Lexa she knows does not exist for anyone else. The knowledge had given her strength once, and has stranded her here.

“What’s to stop you from sucking my people dry once the grounders turn on us?”

“And give up your resources? A healthy fighting force immune to radiation? An infinite, voluntary supply of bone marrow?”

“That’s great for you. What could we possibly have to gain?”

“Everything the grounders won’t let us have.”

His eyes sweep the faces behind her. She doesn’t look back, but Emerson’s self-satisfaction says enough. It’s empty promise, but the others aren’t burdened with the costs; they hope and dream. Clarke wants to turn back, rail at them, make them see. 

“We have missiles, Clarke,” Emerson’s speaking to her again. “You know we will not go quietly. They’re primed for your camp, and their villages. Mount Weather itself has a self-destruct mechanism. Your people are still inside. Who knows how long it’ll take for you to storm the Mountain? It’s a bit of a tight fit.”

“You’d take us with you just because you can?”

“I’m saying we could. Take the offer. We’re surviving. You’re surviving. Even the grounders will survive today. End it here.”

They’re shuffling behind her, impatient. Clarke knows that they’re convinced. She would’ve been. Before. But if Abby, and Raven, Jasper and Bellamy, if all their lives can be made a certainty one more day—

“You think they’re going to go quietly?”

“Convince the Commander to fight another day. She knows it well.”

“What makes you think I’ll be able to?”

“She cares about her people. And you and her,” Emerson has the gall to smirk, “have a rapport. And we have you. The stakes have changed. I’ll let her people go, on the condition she withdraws.”

“She won’t believe you.”

“She’ll believe you.”

Clarke’s holds her gun steady, brimming with loathing. The intensity of it surprises her. She should’ve stopped listening, if she’d just charged ahead—she imagines shooting Emerson anyway, the arc of his blood, the look on his face. Revulsion almost doubles her over: at herself, at Emerson, at the decision she’s about to make.

His hands are still held in surrender. She lowers her weapon.

“You made the right choice,” Emerson says, somewhere dimly behind her, but she’s marching towards the fray ahead. Lexa’s troops are pinned behind cover, bravely holding out for a flank attack that will never come.

“Call off your people.”

Emerson complies.

It isn’t until Clarke summons Lexa that her people emerge. “Commander,” Clarke calls. Lexa's wearing blood on her face, a second layer of lurid paint. “You have to retreat.”

Lexa’s far too herself for an outburst. Even her crumpled, confused look is short-lived as Emerson steps into view next to Clarke. She feels his presence as a visceral thing, her skin crawling with protest where he stands just short of her. Further behind, other footsteps, firearms she knows are being levelled.

Lexa’s expression becomes one of calm, quiet understanding, a studied and far too practiced look of acceptance. She stares at Clarke unblinkingly—stares, and stares.

“What have you done?”

“What you would’ve done. Save my people, and yours. Please, Lexa. No more of them have to die. Emerson said he’ll release them. I’ll make sure he does.”

“At what cost?”

When Clarke lapses, Emerson steps in. “An alliance,” he gloats. “The right one.”

Lexa’s only reaction is a tick in her throat, a tendon at its base jerking against the skin. It locks Clarke’s knees.

"Don't fight this battle," she begs. "They'll take us with them. It's not the one."

An order barked to the air, and the horn sounds over the battlefield. Lincoln’s next to appear, almost immediately after the signal, breath fast and heavy.

“What is this?”

It’s nearly a physical sensation when Lexa breaks their stare to fire rapid and vaguely menacing Trigedasleng at him. “ _Taim yu sad em op, yu wan op kom emo_.”

She’s half-turned before Clarke reacts, only able verbalize one thought: “I’m sorry.”

Lexa says nothing. Her back’s fully to Clarke, and her people are closing rank behind her. Soon, she’s one of many.

Clarke’s next realization is the kind that roots her to the ground, dizzying and cumbrous. She’s too late. There is no returning from this.

Section by section, like the tide ebbing, the grounders are turning back. Unlike Lexa, they look back, memorizing faces for something black to harbour in their hearts.

“Lincoln,” Clarke begins, scouring her mind, looking his way only to see that he is similarly dumbstruck.

“An alliance? Clarke, you know what they want, what they’ll do. You can’t want that.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why?”

“You don’t know how many we could’ve lost today. I can’t—no,” she stutters, trying to put name to the plan in her mind, the solution she can so clearly see that seems to be lost on everyone but her. “It doesn't have to come to this. It's not the end. I can stop this, from the inside.”

“You can’t stop this.” Lincoln rubs his face, slow and disbelieving. “The Commander told me to choose a side, and die on it.”

“I understand.” Clarke searches her jacket. “Bring her this radio. Give it to her, leave it somewhere she’ll find it, anything. Can you do it?”

Lincoln accepts it cautiously, holding it away from himself. “What’s the range?”

“Fifty miles max.”

He nods, arm and radio falling to his side. “I’ll try.”

Knowing that it’s the best that she can expect, Clarke steps back. “I’m sorry, Lincoln. May we meet again.”

His reply is a look over his shoulder, a look utterly sick at heart. But he goes just as quietly, following the steps of his Commander’s retreat.

\--

It’s weeks before Clarke is able to pick up the radio, but she doesn’t do so halfheartedly. Her spare hours are spent repeating a concise, practiced message she knows will be difficult to deny.

“Lexa, this is Clarke. You’re in danger. Please respond.”

It takes another week. Her ability to radio in secret is limited to early mornings and late nights, limited by whatever Lexa’s own movements might be, very possibly Lexa’s mistrust, and dare Clarke think it—animosity. In the middle of the eighth night, she finally hears it. The crackle of the radio, someone readying themselves to respond, then silence.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

Silence. Clarke tries again.

“I need to know you’re trustworthy. Identify yourself.”

There’s a delay, then the channel is reopened. “It is your trustworthiness that is in doubt,” finally filters through, carefully enunciated.

It is Lexa, after all, and Clarke holds fast to the disclosure. “Lexa, listen. I need to tell you in person. Show you in person. I know you have a kill order on us, but I need to get to you. If I die, my information dies with me.”

“You speak, but you tell me nothing.”

Clarke rubs the lines creasing her forehead. “Our scouts found an armory, a stockpile. Weapons, missiles, I don’t know, left over from the war. There’s a map; I made a copy. I can show you where it is, and you can get there before we do.”

More silence, and Clarke’s desperation spills over. “We’ve been scouting further than before. There was an Ark station that landed in Ice Nation territory. We welcomed them back and they’re fanatics, and it’s making things worse. Everything’s getting worse. I’m not getting through to them anymore. They want to expand our territory, and take yours by force. If Cage gets his hands on that stockpile, a lot of people are going to die. Get to it first, and they’ll think twice about attacking you.”

Static, then a sigh. “In three night’s time, there will be a man an hour’s walk south. He will escort you to me.”

“You won’t regret this. Thank you.”

The radio stays inert. Clarke tucks it back under her mattress, and begins to plan.

On the third night, Clarke has dinner with her mother, a nightcap with her peers, and makes a late retirement to her room. She takes her time packing, until no one will be out and about but the night staff.

It’s not to be. Halfway down to the mines, Bellamy sees her coming from a hall’s length away. “Clarke? Where are you going?”

“You first,” she tries, tamping down the defensiveness that was her first instinct.

“Guard duty. I traded out for Miller. It’s his boyfriend’s birthday.” Bellamy caps his explanation with an expectant look.

“I’m going outside to check on Monroe. She cut out of drunkball and I want to make sure she’s okay.”

“I’ll walk you.”

“Are you sure? You look tired.”

“We haven’t really talked lately.”

Clarke wants to laugh. They’ve argued at length, along with others in any position of leadership for weeks, and it is all the talking they have done. They’ve never been so divided, and it’s fracturing whatever’s left of their friendship.

“Yelling isn’t talking?” She turns on the charm, with no choice but to walk alongside him.

It works. Bellamy smiles, relaxing. “It’s yelling.”

“Your standards are higher than mine.”

“We’re not the enemy. I feel like you forget that sometimes.” He broaches the topic tamely enough, but Clarke can’t help but tense, be goaded into it again.

“The enemy,” Clarke punctuates, “is war. Senseless killing. Death. All of which are things you and the others seem to want.”

“This is our chance to have the life we dreamed of having on the ground. It’s worth the sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice is something you give of yourself! It’s murder when it’s other people!” Clarke shuts her eyes, clenching her teeth, willing it all away. “We’ve talked about this before. We keep going in circles.”

“You won’t say it, but it’s the Commander, isn’t it? She changed your mind. She’s the Commander—she’ll do anything to protect her people, including using you.”

“I did worse. I betrayed her and got into bed with her enemy.”

“You can’t let guilt cloud your judgement.”

“It’s not guilt!”

It was the wrong thing to say. Clarke can only watch as Bellamy’s features reassemble to take on an understanding he thinks he has reached. “You never talked about how much time you spent with her while I was here. I never even really thought about it.”

Clarke whips around, attempts to control herself forgotten. “What exactly are you saying?”

Bellamy considers it, then eases back behind the line. “Nothing.”

They continue in silence, and Clarke stews.

Her mother has withdrawn altogether, caring for the injured from the night of the betrayal. Of those that have strength enough still to argue, none stand with Clarke. Cage, Pike, and Emerson are militant, and drawing Bellamy into their sphere of influence. Kane is sympathetic to her bids for peace, but neutral at best.

She’s had many a conversation alone with Kane, but there’s one matter she’ll never have his agreement on, the matter that splinters her from the rest.

On the matter of the grounders, her mind has been changed. Theirs have not.

They reach the doors to the tunnels, and she about-faces, ready with ammo to antagonize him into leaving her alone.

It’s with a sick sense of satisfaction that she looks down the wrong end of Bellamy’s sidearm. It has taken him long enough.

“You’re not checking on Monroe, are you?”

“No,” she confirms. The game is over. “I’m leaving.”

“Leaving?” His scowl deepens impossibly. “The grounders will kill you on sight. Are you crazy?”

“Maybe they will.” It’s not really a lie.

“You’re deserting. Clarke, you’re deserting. Think about what you’re doing.”

“I’m deserting? What are you doing? You’re so convinced you’re on the right side, that there is one. But these are people, Bellamy. Same as us. People who want to live, who have families, who feel just as deeply as we do. I’m not going to participate in genocide.”

“But what, you’ll go to them? Side with them?”

“I don’t want to fight anyone!”

“You’re picking a side right now. And it’s not us.”

“So kill me, if it’s so easy for you. Because I won’t be a part this.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Bellamy insists, drops his gun, and reaches for her.

The worst possible eventuality has occurred, but Clarke is prepared. She ducks under his lunge and drives her head into his abdomen, the natural recoil of his body prompting her to yank his head downwards and into her knee.

She feels the bridge of his nose against her kneecap, the crack, the warm gush of blood through her jeans with an almost clinical interest. His breathing is loud and laboured as she grapples with him, trying to keep his head bowed, scrambling for a headlock.

But her advantage of surprise is beginning to give way to his advantage of strength. She feels his head slip out from under her arm, slick with blood. The escape is followed immediately by an overhand hook, catching her fully in the eye before she ducks and drives her fist into his solar plexus.

The impact releases a spray of blood from Bellamy’s nose. She feels it splash across her cheek before he kicks her knee out from under her in a direction it’s not supposed to go. She falls with a yell of pain, and lands on her hip with another. Not about to get up quickly, she rolls onto her back, ready to kick at him, take every one of her last chances.

Bellamy doesn’t advance. He’s looking at her with incredulity. His body jerks, and he takes a boneless fall to the tiles. Behind him is Octavia with a stun baton, wild-eyed and frantic.

“Clarke, go!”

She’s next to Clarke, fingers too tight around her wrist.

“God, Octavia, what if he—”

“Don’t be stupid, there’s more at risk than me! Fucking go, now!”

She goes, limping through the mines, through an exit opposite the camp outside. She crawls in the dark to the treeline, and waits until she has the cover of the woods to circle south of Mount Weather. She does this with the vision in her left eye impeded and the skin around it throbbing, the taste of her blood in her mouth, her knee seizing with every step.

Octavia. She should’ve known. If anyone was sympathetic, it would be the junior Blake, whom she hasn’t spoken to since their alliance with the grounders broke. Octavia had for once prudently kept her head down, already on a precipice with their new allies, sullen and heartbroken. But her displeasure, if not outright hatred for Clarke broadcasted all too clearly.

Clarke had been too involved in shouting matches with the leadership to consider those outside of it. What if Octavia wasn’t her only ally? Has she left too early to find out who her allies could be? Too early to redeem them? What if her best option at ending this war is still in the Mountain?

Clarke runs out of time for further recrimination. A figure drops out of the trees ahead of her, allowing her to approach with full advance warning.

“Who are you?” Surprised and fearful that it isn’t a grounder that she knows, it is all she has time to ask before a gag and hood descend on her, and her hands are anchored behind her back. She’s slung across a horse like a carcass, and rest of the trip is similar agony.

They stop to rest at points, but her bonds stay on, and she nods in and out for the short hours that she’s allotted.

It’s daytime when they arrive at their destination. The man she is with calls up to what must be guards, and she hears a set of gates groan apart for them.

Clarke feels every hoof beat on stone in her bones, but the implications of it are enough to distract from the jolting. Even TonDC hadn’t been paved.

Her captor dismounts shortly, transferring her from the horse to her shaky legs. They walk some minutes, and she’s pushed roughly along from cobblestone to an even, hard surface. Peripheral noise dies away; she’s indoors. When he stops her, it’s followed by a peculiar sensation of rising, and dread begins to displace her tired indifference.

More doors, voices. A carpet. His hand on her shoulder sends her crashing towards it, knee impacting with a grunt of pain. The hood is snatched off her head, and the precise angle of the sun dazes Clarke for an instant.

She recovers, but neither occupant of the room is looking at her.

“I’ve done as you asked,” her escort is saying. “Brought her to you alive. Lift my banishment.”

Then there’s Lexa.

“It’s lifted. Leave us.” It’s far too cursory, but the man has the presence of mind to obey.

Clarke has a second to pre-emptively flinch before she’s wrenched to her feet by her lapels and backed roughly against a wall. She still gasping when the gag is extracted, leaving her to worry at her split lip as Lexa simmers.

And Lexa simmers to a boil. A blade whips up against her throat, so tight that every breath rises and falls against its edge. It’s not quite sharp enough to cut with the slightest pressure. Death by a dull blade will be artless, a brutality. Just what Lexa likely thinks Clarke deserves.

“I should kill you,” Lexa rumbles, almost all subvocal vibration. “My people would expect no less of me.” She doesn’t look as angry as Clarke expected, but there’s anger, then there’s something beyond it.

“Why don’t you?”

“If you are of any use to me alive—” The blade shoves forward again, leaving its imprint on Clarke’s skin, at odds with the words.

“Everything I said to you on the radio is true,” Clarke squeezes in.

“Your word is worth nothing.”

It stings. All Clarke has at the moment are her words, but she is in no position to contest the point. She nods to where her bag has been discarded at the foot of the throne. “Then look in there.”

Disengaging from her with a brusque yank, Lexa turns, not quite from Clarke, knife in hand as she upends the bag with the other.

It’s Clarke’s personal effects, and none immediately suspicious—clothes, a medical kit, a pouch of drawing implements—

“The sketchpad,” Clarke prompts. “Last page.”

The map is a patchwork of her memory of the original and scout reports, a jumble of roads and landmarks and labels. A sudden, profound fear strikes her: that Lexa won’t understand it, that Clarke’s novice cartography is too far removed from the grounder’s.

Clarke hastens to clarify. “The armory’s east of TonDC. Used to belong to the National Guard. There’s a river that runs southeast of it, and a stadium nearby, bigger than anything for miles.”

Lexa doesn’t react with any recognition, but traces the map with her finger and nods. “The crater.”

It doesn’t take Clarke long to catch on. “The Capitol must’ve been ground zero for the bombs.”

“My people will not go near the crater.”

“What?”

“It’s cursed. There are things that have claimed the old city as breeding ground. Creatures.”

“Like the Pauna?” Clarke remembers, wincing.

“Yes.”

“Our scouts never reported anything like that.”

“Your scouts were few, and skilled. If we march on the city, it’ll be different.” Lexa holds onto the sketchpad sedately, but she’s looking past it. “Any armory should have been ransacked before our time.”

It’s the suspicion Clarke’s braced herself for. “The Mountain Men have old maps of the area. The armory was a point of interest too far for them to scout until now. When our scouts got there, they didn’t see any old attempts at excavation. It was promising.”

“Why haven’t your people acted on this?”

“Logistics. We don’t have wagons or anything to transport goods with. We can’t use your roads. And I—well, I was being a nuisance.”

Lexa lifts her chin, but doesn’t quite look at Clarke. “Were you?”

“There would be no way to avoid attracting attention if we started a salvage operation. I wasn’t finished listing the ways it could go wrong when I left.”

“Ways it could go wrong,” Lexa repeats blankly. She links her hands behind her back, beginning to pace. “Say your people are waiting in ambush. Only a small force would be required. Or your people are waiting with a missile, because they know you will have convinced me of the urgency. Say your people have learned our stories of the crater. They know my people will not approach the crater, but they will go where their Commander leads them.”

This Clarke isn’t prepared for. She’s stunned speechless. She hasn’t imagined any of these scenarios; they’re beyond her in every capacity. But there’s only one concern at the forefront of her mind, too powerful to remain unarticulated.

“You can’t go there. Just order your warriors to do it. They’ll die for you.” In her fervor, she kicks away from the wall, with no reaction from Lexa, and barely noticing herself. “Peace won’t be possible without you. None of the other grounders would give it, or me, a chance. If you die, I’m dead, and all this will have been for nothing. I need you.”

Lexa’s movements cease. She appears not even to draw breath, and Clarke finds herself holding her own, waiting for that impossible mask to break as completely hers has.

It doesn’t. Lexa angles for the doors, yanking them open with a curt demand. “ _Teik em we_.”

Lexa exits. She’s taken Clarke’s entire sketchbook. Clarke doesn’t dare call her back.

\--

Lexa doesn’t see her for a week.

Clarke sleeps poorly. There is nothing, nobody loyal to her, to stop a disgruntled grounder from killing her in her sleep.

But her treatment at the hands of the grounders is gentler and less lethal than she has any right to expect. The few that she sees are aloof, but formal. Her meals are generous and delivered to her quarters at the same hour every day, and her guards accompany her to the roof of the tower every evening. Her injuries from her confrontation with Bellamy heal quickly in repose.

Another evening is idling away on the roof when Lexa comes to her, stiff-backed with her customary restraint.

As Lexa is illuminated gradually, Clarke sees that something is wrong. She’s holding her arm away from her body at an angle, and if Clarke lets her eyes wander, makes out the telltale bulk of dressings underneath her coat.

“What happened?”

Clarke waits on bated breath, and Lexa seems to know it, pausing to peruse her expression.

“Your information was accurate. We’ve recovered weapons, some that we do not recognize.”

“Maybe I could help. We learned about conventional warfare on the Ark, there were—” It isn’t Lexa that cuts Clarke off, but her cast of imperious impassivity.

“I’ll ask for your counsel when I need it,” Lexa finishes, when it is clear Clarke is spent.

Clarke nods her acceptance. All Lexa has come to report is that she won’t yet be executed. She tries to focus on the darkening landscape, but finds herself listening for Lexa’s departure.

It doesn’t come, and she begins to fret. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe her value has been exhausted. Maybe she’s inviting a knife in her back. Clarke waits, defenseless.

“Your people truly did not know what was buried there?”

“It’s an armory,” Clarke spins slowly, confusion complete. They regard each other some more, and Clarke’s apprehension flourishes. “What is it? What did you find?”

Lexa seems to come to a decision, but the tension hasn't yet snapped. “Something is happening to my warriors. My healers cannot do their work.”

“What’s happening? How many?"

“Four of my warriors are sick. One is dying. The healer says his lungs are full of fluid.”

“It’s an illness? Is it contagious?”

“No. There are no others. But they have burns we have never seen before.”

“You have to let me see. Let me help.” It comes forth unintentionally demanding, but Lexa’s moving as soon as Clarke is, forcing Clarke to jog after her to the lift.

As they descend, Lexa surprises her yet again.

“Did Roan mistreat you?”

Clarke jolts. “What? Who?”

“Your escort. Did he give you those injuries?”

“No.”

“Then your people turned on you," Lexa concludes, giving nothing away.

“They think I turned on them.” Clarke’s grimaces, too wry for a smile. “Old story at this point.”

They disembark and Lexa surrounds her with more guards than strictly necessary—or would have been, before the events at the Mountain. She can barely see ahead of her until they reach the clinic, a stout building a block away.

It's simple to see who Lexa refers to once they enter the clinic. There are more patients than beds, but a buffer zone has nevertheless formed around four unfortunates.

They’re all in state, but one is unmistakably on his deathbed. His eyelids are swollen shut, every breath hitching and truncated. Burns litter his arms and torso, riddled with disproportionately large blisters filled with yellow fluid that crusts on the sheets.

“Healer. Make your report to Clarke.”

She’s startled out of her observations, looking up to greet the holder of such a title. He doesn’t return it, bristling with resentful distrust. Still, the command prevails.

“I treated only wounds from battle when the Commander returned. Four warriors reported with itching and peeling skin the next morning. Within a day there were burns and boils, and Ellic became unable to draw breath.”

"Can you help him?" asks a voice from the next bed. This warrior's arms and chest are similarly burned, but she speaks without difficulty. If she too feels the healer's resentful distrust, she shows nothing for it. That, or care and concern have overruled it.

Clarke draws close to her bedside. "Were you with him?"

“We were escorting a wagon together."

Clarke’s examining without meaning to, cataloguing her restlessness, the sheen of sweat, every nonverbal indicator of pain. “What’s your name?”

“Thesda.”

“Is there something we can do for your pain?”

“I can bear the pain,” Thesda maintains, suffering etched into every line of her body.

“She rejects the poultices. She will not be touched."

Clarke heaves a sigh, leveling a glare at the healer. “Because she’s in pain! What about something to help her sleep?”

Thesda’s eyes widen hopefully, but it’s the healer who speaks again out of turn.

“It’s not common—”

“Give her the medicine.”

The Commander reigns, and Clarke flashes Lexa an appreciative glance before reconsidering the warrior with new interest. “Just a little longer, Thesda. Do you remember anything happening to the four of you that didn’t happen to the others? Anything that stands out to you at all?”

“Our wagon lost a wheel in a battle. A box of shells fell. Ellic replaced it, and the wheel.”

“And only the four of you were near it?”

“Yes.”

Clarke rubs at her temples. The recollection is there, in the periphery. In school, a photograph, another war.

“Burned without fire. As if they walked through the acid fog,” somebody comments, and everything falls into place.

“Where are the shells?”

Lexa blinks, the extent of her bewilderment over Clarke’s abrupt panic. “In isolation, under guard. No one is to touch any of the takings. They're safe.”

“No, you’re safe,” Clarke chokes out, sagging in relief that some blithely ignorant grounder isn’t clumsily shuffling through Lexa’s newest acquisitions. It occurs to her that she’s become the object of an entire room’s study, and lowers her voice. “Commander, may we speak private?”

“Come,” Lexa concedes. Clarke trails her into what must be the stockroom, far too small for the conversation they’re about to have.

“It’s mustard gas. You’re lucky that it must’ve been a small leak, and stopped on its own.”

“Mustard gas?” Lexa repeats, head canting minutely.

“It’s a chemical warfare agent. A bit like acid fog. Enough exposure short-term, you get burns that look like that, blindness, respiratory failure, death. Long-term,” and she stops. She knows the words mutagenic and carcinogenic, and they’re enough for her, but not for Lexa. “If you live, you’ll suffer, and so will your children.”

She isn’t entirely sure what the extent of Lexa’s understanding is, but something is happening on Lexa’s face, a gradual but complete blockade.

“Lexa. You can’t.”

Lexa leans in closer still, her voice too finely modulated: “I can’t?”

“This is different!” Clarke stands firm, well aware her voice is rising, unable to stem it. “Before the war, there was something called the Geneva Protocol. There were weapons that everyone agreed were too horrific for use. Mustard gas was one of them.”

“The Mountain Men use acid fog, turn our men into reapers. They have already broken whatever terms of engagement you seem to think exist.”

“They’ve stopped. They won’t risk their people on the ground. My people.”

“They have missiles.”

“A dwindling supply. You know they will only use them if you force their hand.”

“That changes nothing. They're capable of far more than we are. Now they have an effective ground force with superior weaponry because of your alliance. Are we not entitled to use whatever is available to us to protect ourselves? Or is that your people’s sole province?”

It’s the truth, but not the heart of the matter. Clarke gladly pierces it. “There’s not many of us to begin with. You know what a weapon with generational effects could do. You're just as capable and willing as Cage Wallace. I thought you were different."

The barb doesn't land; it rebounds. “You will hold onto your ideals until no one is left to entertain them.”

“My ideals led me back to you!”

If it’s the wrong thing to say, Clarke will always say it. Lexa bears down on her, implacable.

“Would you have given me your map if you knew we would find this mustard gas?” It’s blunt, somehow soft, and ruthless. "Are we different?"

And when Clarke hesitates to answer, it’s answer enough.


	2. Chapter 2

The bed has become a torture device. Clarke gasps awake, feeling her skin for blisters, gulping for air. All of her dreams have become variations of one distinct theme.

Death. Every time a different perpetrator, a different means.

She quits the bed and sits at what has become her usual spot at the window. Below her hums the capital city meant to change her mind. She can understand why Lexa said it, but grounders—and their Commander—seem beyond her comprehension again, and very far away.

The sun isn’t in yet the sky when a commotion in the hall captures her attention. Wide awake, although hazy with what is becoming habitual sleep deprivation, Clarke borders on the locked door, listening.

By some grace, she barely eludes impact when it swings open with a crash against the jamb. Lexa’s advancing on her, coiled tight with something Clarke doesn’t recognize; she instinctively backpedals.

“Your people attacked Drews. A settlement of traders southwest of here.”

The accusation is stark, no doubt to force a reaction, but Clarke’s is one of slow confusion.

“That doesn’t make any sense. They would know that you’ve raided the armory by now. They shouldn’t be attacking.”

“My coalition watches the Mountain. It’s not a mistake.”

“Then—” Clarke shakes her head, unable to rationalize it.

“Then we respond in kind.”

“Hey, wait!”

The guards take Clarke by either arm. Her arrested momentum takes her swinging between them, off her feet.

“ _Breik em au_. _Dison nou na bash ai op_.”

Lexa’s directive releases her to finding her footing with a thud, and she races through a gauntlet of unwelcoming, but immobile guards.

The chase ends in what looks like a study. It’s well-lived and teeming: overstuffed bookcases from floor to ceiling, an unwieldy desk piled high and overflowing onto a plush armchair behind it. There’s too much too much to keep in, things that are Lexa’s.

Clarke skids to a stop, engrossed by the tea stains and dog-eared pages, until she remembers her purpose. “What do you mean, respond in kind?”

When Lexa finally turns, unmoved in the face of Clarke’s outcry, she’s midway through inspecting a knife, and it glints dully in her hand. Clarke almost backs away, but it’s sheer, uncontainable obstinacy that keeps her planted.

“Drews used to be an airfield. Now it’s a graveyard for old machines.”

“Base Andrews,” Clarke recalls, each word heavier in her mouth.

“So you know it.” Lexa tests the blade with her finger. This one is sharp.

“I wasn’t keeping it from you! I swear, the mustard gas has nothing to do with this. I don’t know why they’re so interested in Drews. There were a lot of places Cage wanted to investigate. Most of them were already destroyed or on inhabited grounder territory. Even Emerson told him they were fool’s errands.”

“The armory was not a fool’s errand. Drews holds nothing but trinkets to my people. Yours risk war to retrieve whatever it is they think they need.”

“Anything they salvage could be dangerous,” Clarke agrees, “but it still doesn’t make sense. Why would they take a risk this big?”

“You wanted to deter them, but they race to arms.”

It’s an impersonal statement of fact, but nevertheless a stark reminder that Clarke’s hedged her bets and failed. Clarke shifts into herself protectively, at once resigned and bitterly self-deprecating. “I just made it worse, didn’t I?”

Lexa rustles through the desk, unearthing a yellow, curling map drawn in grounder tradition. She goes through the motions of mulling over it, screening her thoughts. “People rarely have the internal consistency you hope they do. They don’t always behave in predictable ways.”

It’s simultaneously comforting, and nod to Clarke’s hypocrisy. But it’s another statement of fact, clear of judgement.

“Are we going to war?” Clarke raises again, this time a titch more forlorn.

“Is that what you expect of me?”

“War with those weapons won’t be war like you know it.”

“I know that. I am willing—willing and capable of the things you and your people call barbarism.” The words are edged, tipped with hard consonants. Whatever Lexa is now, it’s strayed from neutral. “Did you truly believe that men locked away in a mountain could stop the twelve clans from ever taking up a gun? Maybe their threats were once sufficient, but it’s become our way.” Lexa’s still a table’s length away, but the heat of her gaze feels far closer. “There will always be a need for violence. The guns that keep us alive today, tomorrow we turn on ourselves.”

“You’re afraid,” Clarke realizes, soft, “about what introducing guns to your people will do. You’re not wrong to be.”

“Fear will not keep me from duty.” Worded plainly, it’s a threat, but its delivery is too swift, almost defensive. Like a practiced reminder, a salve for an ache.

Before the command is given, there is a burden unshared. Clarke doubts Lexa will accept anything she has to say on the subject. She diverts.

“So what’s your plan?”

“After the armory, I had all areas that may be of interest to the Mountain Men fortified. Old tech, ruins, nearby villages.”

“Then Drews was prepared.”

“Not enough,” Lexa counters, pulling at the map. The symbols on it are foreign to Clarke, but Lexa runs a finger between two points and makes a grumble of disapproval. “They were not seen marching. It’s a long a distance from the Mountain. It should be impossible.”

“Wait, but where is it?”

Lexa finds other markers for Clarke on request, a silent but lenient endorsement of whatever notion Clarke is chasing. With each revelation, the map becomes more recognizable. The wide swathe of Trikru territory overlays her memory of the maps in the Mountain, crowded with names and places Clarke only thought did not matter.

“Modern cities had rapid transit by train to every corner of the city, a network of underground tunnels. I thought they’d be unusable by now, but there has to be a station near Drews. It’s the only way.” Clarke skims the pads of her fingers over the rough parchment, jogging her memory. “They wouldn’t even have to restore all of it. Just enough to duck in and out and evade notice.”

“If that’s true, they must be on foot. It’s not too late to take riders.” Lexa reaches for a tin of charcoal, offering it to Clarke. “Mark the paths you remember. An approximation is enough.”

The charcoal glides across paper with ease. “The branch goes south from TonDC, I think, under the river, then there’s an transfer here.” Clarke’s mutterings cease when she hears the door open.

“What about me?”

“What about you?” Lexa mirrors, letting the door slide shut.

“Take me. I could talk to them.”

A brow tips towards the ceiling. “Your people do not kill traitors?”

“Not without trial,” Clarke protests weakly, faltering because she doesn’t trust this to be true, not anymore. “I’m better with gunshot wounds than any of your healers. And if I see what they’re after, I might know what for. I’m the only one you have that might know.”

It’s Clarke’s trump card. Lexa looks mightily displeased, but it’s a different bone of contention that she unearths. “I won’t forget, Clarke, that you will only help me if you know your people will be safe. Your peace is different from mine.” Lexa leaves no time for Clarke’s objection, plucking at the door again. “Take what you need. We ride at daybreak.”

The contingent for Drews is fully formed before first light. Clarke watches the warriors gather from the tower, their hunger instilling the whole of the capital with a restless energy. She feels it too, some primeval instinct stirring to life.

Finally, the guards fetch her, and she picks Lexa out immediately, bristling and inscrutable in her war paint. The sight of it only feeds her disquiet, which continues to grow when she notices Lexa white-knuckling the reins to her horse, exchanging harsh words with a bald, severe man in long robes.

She has never seen anyone argue at length with Lexa—even Indra is prompt to defer. Whatever their disagreement, it’s being conducted with ironclad control, both participants rigid and low-toned, and she strains to see over the tops of too many heads.

Then a rider comes alongside her, breaking her line of sight.

“Thesda,” Clarke recognizes, too startled to be annoyed.

“Clarke.” The warrior gives her a wan smile. She looks better. Visible burns have healed into fragile, shiny new skin, and her bearing is spirited.

“You shouldn’t be fighting,” Clarke reprimands her anyway, “new skin is delicate. That’s how you get an infection.”

Thesda’s smile doesn’t dim. If anything, the mention of her battle scars bolsters her. She pulls her horse closer to Clarke’s. “I’m not riding into battle. I’m your guard.”

The shape of a “why?” is on Clarke’s mouth, but she doesn’t need Thesda to say it. Lexa’s qualms were clear. She’s being guarded from and guarded against.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help Ellic.” The topic is no safer, but it’s what comes immediately to mind.

“He’s at peace.”

“I’d understand if—you’d blame me for what happened to you and the others. It was my information.”

Thesda, still looking impossibly serene, jiggles a shoulder. “Some do. Some don’t.”

Maybe “why you?” would’ve been the more appropriate question. If the hard lesson learnt from Gustus is to surround Clarke with grounders prone to certain sympathies, it’s an expected show of a Commander’s pragmatism. But death is a dark and painful place to make a well of wisdom; Clarke knows this much.

She’s drawn from her thoughts by the screech of the opening gates and a blur of dark motion against them. The excitement builds.

“ _Kom Drews!_ ”

Drews is a hard day’s ride from Polis. They run their horses ragged, the din of their travel precluding all conversation and nearly all thought.

Clarke grows saddle sore, and breathes not a word of it. The forest closing around them is a short-lived relief, slowing their progress until shouting at the head of the column draws them to a halt. Clarke tenses against the motion of her horse, and it snorts in protest, but allows her to inch them towards the front.

Lincoln is at the head of pack, gesticulating in a direction different from the one they’re facing. Then he heads off the same way, flat and streamlined on the saddle, and Lexa’s leading the rest of them in pursuit.

Soon enough, Lexa signals a stop and Clarke continues weaving her way towards her. Lincoln’s pointing to what looks, from a distance, like an overgrown cave.

“We tracked them there. The others scouted ahead and haven’t returned.”

Whatever signage there was has long degraded, and the overhang nearly crumbled away, but the concrete steps are recognizable enough.

“Clarke was right.” Lexa accords the brief acknowledgement before sliding easily from her mount, nodding to Indra. “ _Don kong ai mou os gonas. Ai gada strat in._ ”

Lincoln takes the opportunity to nudge in beside Clarke, supporting her clumsy and uncomfortable dismount without comment.

“Octavia?” he asks, just the single, unwieldy word.

“She helped me escape.” Clarke charts his reaction, however muted. “Bellamy won’t let them do anything to her. Nothing’s stronger than family.”

“Love is strong. I hoped…” Lincoln trails off, eyes downcast momentarily. They’re clear of sentiment when he refocuses on her. “But I’m glad to see you.”

Lincoln’s stubborn, though brittle veneer of indifference is familiar and troubling. But it isn’t hers to question, and Clarke fumbles yet again for something reassuring to say.

Somebody calls his name, and Lincoln’s gone again. Clarke waits until he’s out of earshot, then turns to Lexa some short distance away. She’s alone and apart, stroking the down the flank of her horse with a faraway look on her face. If she’s thinking the thoughts one has before battle, Clarke knows them too well. But they were thoughts Lexa was there to soothe.

Feeling strangely hesitant, she approaches from the front, quietly petitioning for Lexa’s attention. “What’re you thinking?” she ventures, once she gets it.

“I take a small company. We stay mobile and give chase. Their progress may be slowed by what they’ve salvaged. The rest stay and guard our backs.”

“But you don’t know what’s down there. They’ve already been through.”

“There’s no time to prepare further. We’ve fought in worse conditions.”

Clarke pushes back, her supply of contrariness inexhaustible.

“Those tunnels are perfect for an ambush. Lincoln said your scouts haven’t come back.”

“I know that it’s dangerous, Clarke. What’re you trying to say?”

Clarke flounders. Lexa lifts a hand to summon Thesda, who has been watching from a questionable distance.

“ _Kigon ona Drews. Sou nou teik em dig lufa au.”_

Despite the gravity of the situation, Thesda’s mouth twitches. “ _Ai get in ai dula, Heda.”_

“ _Den gyon au. Indra! Hanch shils osir gada?”_

And like that, they’ve been dismissed.

“Come on,” Thesda prods, handing Clarke her horse’s reins and orienting them with a mere look at the sky.

Still looking behind her, at Lexa poring with her second over a map, Clarke resists. “Isn’t it dangerous to split up?”

“No more than staying here. It’s a short walk, even if our horses rest. I’ll protect you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about.”

To her embarrassment, Thesda barks out a laugh. “ _Heda_ does not need or want your worries.”

“You don’t worry about her?”

Thesda frowns, as if wrestling with a foreign concept. “It’s not for us.”

Inexplicably saddened, Clarke walks on, feeling slow and dry as stone. The further she thinks about Lexa travelling underground, the stronger the sense of her trepidation.

“What about when she—”

“Shh, look.” Thesda reaches across, pointing.

It takes Clarke awhile to detect it, but on the highest boughs of a spindly, dead-looking evergreen, a bird black and indelible as ink with a wingspan wider than Clarke’s seems to be watching back.

“It is said the _airut_ carries our thoughts to the dead,” Thesda murmurs to her. “Even those you wish not to share.”

What she knows of grounder beliefs is little, and her skepticism great, but Clarke can’t help but think of her father, Wells, Finn—if they were with her now, if they had access to her innermost thoughts, should she be hopeful, or afraid?

Clarke steels herself. “The dead are gone.”

“And the living are hungry,” Thesda finishes, “as they say. But even _Heda_ carries the wisdom of commanders dead and gone.”

“How exactly does that work?”

Thesda shrugs, either out of unwillingness or incomprehension.

“What happens when a Commander dies?”

“You’re very curious.”

“I want to know more about your people.”

“That’s,” Thesda begins, halfway to a grin, when her posture changes abruptly. “Don’t be alarmed.”

“Say that and I’m going to be.”

But Thesda’s serious, and Clarke can only watch as she retrieves a dagger from her boot, orienting it in her palm for a throw. An arm thrown across Clarke’s path halts their journey. Thesda stills with the effort of listening, gaze unfocussed, then her shoulder pulls back, the rest of her body to follow.

It happens quicker than Clarke is ready to react. The dagger takes flight at the same moment something collapses Thesda’s knees and throws the weapon off course.

The steady click and buzz of a taser grows louder and a figure stomps out of the underbrush, applying a systematic and brutal blow to Thesda’s temple with the butt of a rifle. It’s only then Thesda stops fighting and crunches into the leaves. The rifle’s pointing back at Clarke, who’s still too far away.

Around the tip of the dagger buried in Monroe’s left shoulder, a dark stain is blooming through the layers.

“I told them there was no way, but here you are. I swear you’ve got nine lives.”

“Monroe? What’re you doing here?”

“I couldn’t stop Lincoln, but I’m taking you back.”

“They left you behind, even though the place is swarming with grounders?”

“They trust me.”

“To die for them, you mean.”

It’s nearly routine when Monroe frees a set of flex cuffs from her jacket and tightens them around Clarke’s wrists. She digs in her heels until she sees Thesda’s chest rise, then allows Monroe to swing her over one of the horses.

“Where are we even going? There’s too many of them.”

“We’re not going in that way. And shut up, because if they catch us together, we’re both fucked.”

Lexa’s protection can only extend so far. A traitor carousing with the enemy is not a good look. Clarke’s sense of self-preservation—which she usually manages to subdue with great success—flares to life and she grits down on her natural inclinations.

Her other feelings are harder to corral. The horse is reaching the limits of its endurance, beginning to stagger under them with sweat frothing thick and white where the tack rubs against its skin. She’s preparing to say something when Monroe brings them to a hard dismount.

There’s no indication they’ve arrived anywhere. They’re at the edge of swampland, intermittent patches of shallow water stretching as far as she can see. Clarke’s boots are sodden almost immediately, only worsening as Monroe beelines for a hole in the ground submerged in waist-deep water. Rearing back with a doubtful comment at the ready, Clarke’s stymied again as she plunges nearly headlong into the depths with Monroe at her back.

It’s cold, and rank. The beam of Monroe’s flashlight is a sterile white that does little for the tomb-like crawl space they muddle through. The water level rises to her chest before falling and gradually draining away. Clarke’s sense of relief is potent when her boots start to squelch.

Some of the tunnel walls have been shored up recently, and hills of freshly turned rubble narrows the path. In some places, there’s been only enough room freed for a single traveler to slide through. It’s a painstaking pace, and Clarke looks for a hint of Lexa’s passage, but they’ve have made good time, leaving no trace.

Buried behind a mound of chunk concrete is a maintenance tunnel, completely concealed against those not actively searching. Monroe pushes her over the loose footholds first, and Clarke worms through the small space between the doorframe and the rubble, scraping her cheek and landing with a clang against a metal walkway. Complete darkness envelopes her until Monroe falls through and helps herself to a handful of Clarke’s shirttails, herding her ever forward.

They’re steps onto the tracks again when the muffled sound of fighting becomes recognizable. With another few puzzled sweeps, Clarke realizes that the noise comes from beyond the wall. The tracks have split, and taken them from the action.

“Let me look at your shoulder,” Clarke offers, noticing that Monroe has become less insistent behind her.

“Later. We’re not out of the woods just yet. Some of us stayed behind to slow them down.”

“But that’s suicide.”

“What isn’t?”

Clarke flexes her hands, eager to take Monroe and give her a shake. “Nobody’s disposable. Not you, not them.”

“What’re you talking about?” It’s Monroe who grabs at her, clearly feeling the same. “You just went and gave them the tools to just about wipe us out.”

Clarke startles, almost convinced that Monroe knows something about how true it is—but it can’t be possible.

“If Cage had them, he’d be using them right now.” She waits for Monroe to interject, but she doesn’t. “Lexa won’t do anything if you don’t give her a reason to. She can be reasoned with. She does want peace.”

“I believe that you believe you’re doing the right thing.” Monroe begins to walk again. “You can’t stop them.”

Not accepting Monroe’s resignation, Clarke pulls at her bonds futilely. “Everyone keeps saying that! But if we can’t change what we do, then what hope do we have?”

“If that’s what you think, why did you leave?”

“You don’t know Lexa the way I do. She’s different from Cage.”

“This whole alliance rests on the belief that we’re more like them than the grounders.”

“It doesn’t. I don’t believe that.”

“Then why’d you take it?”

“I didn’t have a choice. Now I do.”

Monroe huffs, hand clenching and unclenching against Clarke’s back. “Cage wants your head, you know.”

Clarke waves it aside. “What did you find at the airfield?”

Somehow, she manages to shake loose a natural answer. “I don’t know. They had to bring Raven and they took off with it before most of us really saw anything. Ever since we lost the armory, Cage and others have been… scary. That’s why you need to come back.” Monroe hesitates, but her pinched look smooths over when she glances at Clarke, comforted by whatever she sees there. “What Cage did to us, what he was willing to do to us—no one just forgets that. Everyone’s out for themselves, but we can’t make it on our own.”

“We’re better than doing anything to survive.”

“You really think we have a choice?”

Clarke hastens to speak, spotting an in. “I left because I thought I was the only one. But you’re still in there, and there’s Octavia, and Kane, and there has to be more. I won’t give up on you.”

She can tell Monroe’s not wholly convinced, but her willingness to listen is fortifying.                                               

“Don’t let them do this,” Clarke presses on, “whatever they’re planning. It’s not over. Not yet.”

Monroe’s head shakes, and Clarke feels a flash of terror. “They’re planting explosives up ahead.”

The terror is magnified. “No. The Commander’s down here. I have to warn her.”

All of Monroe’s previous reservations have fled, leaving her with an earnestness that pains Clarke to see. “But—it’s too—what if—”

“There a radio under my bed, if they haven’t found it yet. Get it. Wait for me.” Clarke looks back down the way they came, ready to spring into motion.

A set of fingers clamps down around her wrists, but not the hold is not as steadfast as it could be. “I can’t just let you go.”

“Do what you have to. And I’ll do what I have to.”

Clarke lunges free in an explosive burst. She expects either Monroe will give chase, or shoot her in the back. But before Clarke knows it, she’s following the voices calling to each other in Trigedasleng, rounding a bend and running square into a shield wall.

“Explosives in the tunnels!” Clarke exclaims, when Lexa, at the head of the formation, reaches out to steady her by the shoulder. “Pull your people back.”

“ _Heda, nou ge plon kin. Em ste spichen taim omon kru trana ron of._ ” Indra’s warning is expected, her misgivings only recently refreshed.

“I’m not lying. Monroe told me. They’ll collapse the whole section after them, right top of us. We have to go back, right now.”

“ _Heda—_ ”

“ _Shof op. Osir na bants._ ” Lexa decision is split-second, but committed. She whirls to her warriors, rallying them backwards. “ _Nau!_ ”

Heading up the rear, they make for whence they came in a dead sprint. For a stretch, there is no sound but their harsh breaths, the brush and clank of armour and weapons, and the thunder of their steps.

Then there’s the sudden roar Clarke’s waiting for, but it’s succeeded by a rumble, the shockwave after the explosion. Pieces of tunnel begin to fracture around and above them, and into their midst.

A powerful, desperate push sends Clarke sprawling into the dirt. Her teeth snap shut, arms unavailable to soften her fall. Something else impacts the ground behind her. Her first thought isn’t for herself, but for Lexa, who dodges nimbly around the rebar where Clarke had been seconds ago, grabbing the fabric at the nape of Clarke’s neck and wrenching her to her feet.

The hand stays on her back, applying a force unthinking and instinctual, propelling Clarke with new energy towards the light. They take their last steps as if the world is falling down around them, drowning out sound and vision. Clarke shuts her eyes, ducking into a blind run.

Coughing and gasping for air, they’re the last to emerge. Lexa doesn’t rest for a moment. While Clarke’s folded over on the subway steps, she’s looking over her warriors, counting heads with faint movements of her lips. Soot and grime has layered over all of them so thickly that they’re indistinguishable from a distance, perfectly camouflaged in the night.

The torches come on one by one. Thesda greets them, stiff and at attention. Lexa doesn’t spare her a glance, sweeping onward with singular purpose. The stricken expression Thesda wears inspires Clarke to chase after Lexa on resistant legs.

“It wasn’t her fault.”

“She failed her duties.”

“I was asking her about grounder culture. She was distracted.”

“Her duty was to guard you, not to entertain you.”

Clarke bites down on her lip, curtailing her exasperation. “Are you actually angry that you didn’t die today?”

Lexa finally strays from her dogged forward motion to look at her, then looks again, finally reaching for the knife in her thigh holster and bringing it to Clarke’s bonds in a fluid motion. Clarke feels the heft of Lexa’s stare as she rubs the sore red imprints on her skin and tests the stiffness in her limbs.

“There’s a limit to fortune. We answer for what we can control.”

Their conversation is set aside when Lexa forges ahead, making arrangements with her men, leaving Clarke to accompany a glum Thesda.

“Are you alright? Being tased for the first time can be an experience.”

“Only my pride is injured.”

“You did technically help save the Commander.”

Thesda digs up a wan smile, but their conversation too dies quickly. The entire convoy is in fact oddly quiet, catching Clarke in a current of bobbing lights.

Arriving at Drews breaks her from a trance. It isn’t what Clarke expected. The skirmish has left its mark in the swathes of upturned earth, hails of gunfire stippled into the sides of buildings, and projectiles flung far afield yet to be retrieved.

But it isn’t a massacre. Lexa’s preparations have performed as intended. There are makeshift fortifications, cover against ranged weapons, and choke points. No element of surprise is possible over the flat terrain, and the junkyard may as well be a maze to the uninitiated.

And still her people came looking.

Clarke surveys the airfield as the grounders make camp. Between the tents, sheet-metal ribs rise up as if out of a boneyard. It’s hard to imagine they once resembled the pictures she’s seen, or were capable of the things she’s only read.

She feels rather than sees Lexa join her survey. The Commander hasn’t been far, but her work is unending. She speaks intently to the warriors that had accompanied her one moment, and organizes the villagers the next. Indra had intercepted her some ways from Clarke, striking up an exchange Clarke was quick to look away from.

“There are those who still believe you to be a danger to me, including some in my employ.”

“Do you disagree?” Clarke asks, trying not to expose her impatience.

She isn’t successful. Lexa gives her a brief, sideways glance, a curl at the corner of her lip. “Some believe that the gas leak was your plan, and you were after my life. That the longer I allow you to live, the deeper your manipulations will take hold.”

Clarke shuffles her feet. “That’s giving me a lot of credit.”

“A capable ally makes a capable enemy.”

Her question still hasn’t been answered. Clarke exhales, holding in an interrogation. Lexa would never allow herself to be backed into a verbal dead-end, and she elects to change the topic.

“There’s too much here. I still don’t know anything about what they’re up to.”

“It’s done.” Next to her, Lexa clasps her hands behind her back. It’s a familiar motion, a tone of voice Clarke is beginning to look for.

“They haven’t done anything yet.”

“Attacking and stealing from my village is an act of war.”

“But it wasn’t. If you escalate this, if you use what you found in the armory, that will be the point of no return.”

“If I wait and my people suffer, how will I answer for them?” Lexa sighs, slightly deflating as she retires to her tent, holding the flap open for Clarke to follow. “I understand what you’re trying to say. My people don’t have that luxury. They have a will of their own, and they will not tolerate what they see as injustice.”

The slope of Lexa’s shoulders as she takes a torch to the remaining candles is wrong, somehow. Clarke doesn’t have to hunt for something to say.

“That’s why you’re the Commander. You have a vision. Your people trust you to lead them to a better place, and you trust them to know enough to follow.”

Lexa doesn’t so much react then disappear into the second room hidden from view. Clarke knows it’s not a dismissal, but a sign that Lexa’s giving it thought.

Slouching into a chair, Clarke lets herself feel her exhaustion for a moment. The events of the day press at the fringes of her, demanding to be processed, to be felt. A throat clears, and she girds herself before letting the room swim back into view.

“You’re shivering,” Lexa observes mildly, dangling a fresh set of clothes in front of Clarke. “Change and have a wash.” She holds open the flap to the next room expectantly. Clarke bows through the opening, and the burlap swishes back into the place.  

Only too glad to distance herself from her day, Clarke’s face deep in a clean basin of soapy water when she remembers that she’s in the Commander’s tent, wearing the Commander’s clean clothes, splashing about a washbowl left out for the Commander’s use. It brings to mind other times she’s availed herself of Lexa’s hospitality, and a flush that she scrubs out of her face as if intention will erase the memory.

They were allies then, and they’ll never be the same way.

When she returns to the main room, feeling that perhaps she’s washed too much away, Lexa needs only struggle briefly before Clarke steps forward and helps her shrug out of her overcoat. The leather is stiff and unyielding, soiled with all manner of dirt and blood.

But Lexa has no injuries that Clarke can discern, and she’s loose and pliant and permitting of Clarke’s scrutiny, whatever violence that was required of her filed securely away. And this moment of respite, too, gone as surely when she pulls away, turning to the flap of the tent.

 “Why didn’t you leave with Monroe?”

Clarke drapes the coat over a chair, fingering a buckle. “I had to warn you. We’re in this together.”

“You’re not my ally. You’re my prisoner, and my leverage.”

The timbre snaps Clarke’s head towards Lexa. She looks the part, cool and calculating.

“How am I leverage?”

“Will your people not fight for you? Revolt over your death?”

“Cage wants me dead. He likes being betrayed about as much as you.”

“You underestimate your influence. Monroe should’ve killed you, but she didn’t. She feels for you. Your people have attachments that do not obey logic or reason, even to a traitor. It is weakness that can be exploited.”

There’s something rote about the way Lexa says it. It’s not supposed to telling; it never is. But the less Lexa wants to tell, the more she does. It’s the part of her that’s uncontainable and refuses to die, that the mantle of command hasn’t smothered. The woman that precedes the name.

It gives Clarke strength, makes her brave.

“If you really believe that, then weakness might be the reason we can stop this war.”


End file.
